Archive for September, 2005

Yes, spreading is what we’re doing. Since I’m a nice guy, and since it’s probably a bad idea to wait, I’ve released the supped up classic 2003 PuffBOMB Prototype to the public. A download link can be found at the ‘official’ PuffBOMB homepage, PuffBOMB.com.

Currently it’s only available for Windows. Hopefully, I can have the MacOS X version ready to go soon.

Alright, this was inspired from a game idea I had a few years ago. In the midst of working on my new physics engine, I’ve decided to revisit the idea and noticed an oddity in my design. Balloons.

Balloons are interesting. Unlike most objects in a game situation, they have this odd property of opposing gravity and going up. With that alone, we can do a convincing simulation in a game by consistently giving it an upward force larger than gravity. And that’s good enough for a game.

To get more complex, lets talk real life. Now, in real life, a balloon filled with helium floats. Eventually though, it starts to droop, and slowly deflate. So, I’m sitting here thinking about physically modeling balloons, and all of a sudden I’m drawing a blank. Why the heck do they do that?

Aha, well if it ain’t our friend fluid dynamics. The dang real world makes it really easy to forget that oxygen is fluidic, just in a tad more gaseous state than water. It ends up helium is lighter than oxygen, and a balloon’s lift is a result of the molecules fighting to balance themselves. You see the same thing with a flotation device on water. Oxygen is lighter than water, so it does its darnest not to sink.

As for why it wears off and droops, well it seems the rubber balloons are made of is only so strong of a material. At the microscopic level, the fibres make up the shell of the balloon are tight enough to withstand the oxygen and helium pressure, but not necessarily tight enough to keep all the hydrogen in, and all the oxygen out.

Not to mention… well… that knot you tied, *might* not be the tightest. I wasn’t going to say anything. No offense.

Oh, when you look at it that way, it certainly seems like a straightforward phenomenon to simulate. A mere huge count down counter that scales your “lift” force does the trick. It could make an interesting subtlety for a game, if put to the extreme. Running to a helium pump to refill it’s lift capability, and using it before it runs out. There ya go. Minigame. That’s what I like about learning the subtleties of this math and physics engine crap. Would that idea have been as easy to come to using physics middleware?

Interesting? Fascinating? 10 years ago, in math or science class, I wouldn’t have cared. However, if it was perhaps put in to context of games, that might have been a different story.

Well, well. The IGF 2006 Entries are now online, and we have a PuffBOMB clone to duel with. Impulse. It appers to be, according to the description, pretty much the same idea. Lets quote.

Impulse:The player must place bombs and adjust their timers to make a ball hit the goal field. Obstacles, special elements and force fields provide varied levels. An interactive timeline helps controlling the game by jumping to specific times and guarantees a flexible and unique gameplay.

Hehe… Really, I should be proud that people are doing stuff based on my old game. Alas, I’m still required to be dissapointed that I hadn’t done more sooner. Ahh well. Two and a half years and counting since it was released. So far, two games.

Anyways, time to get off my arse. The people will be finding the site soon. Maybe I should really get that revised prototype out ASAP.

At some point throughout the day I was working. Really, I was; You can trust me. My new (3rd) office whiteboard just arrived this morning. I took the liberty of violating it with some math/physics filth. It seems to be holding up well, which is good, as I expect many more shamefull acts of mathematics to be performed on it.

What’s been going on? Geez, there was a whole 5 day gap there, and I never did really talk much before the IGF deadline was looming.

Art, yeah, I’ve been doing lots of drawing. I recently moved on to a new sketchbook. I’m 5 pages in so far, but I like filling up the whitespace, so that’s 30-60 some odd doodles per page. I’ve started doing art study’s, thanks to a recommendation I saw in a tutorial. A few weeks ago I did one I’ll call “small arms on small bodies”. More or less, just taking some rectangular shapes, and adding little rectangular arms in various poses and expressions. More recently, I decided to dive in to something more complex, and identify some style elements of the Creatures in my Head. I tend to do more minimal designs, but I still dig Andrew’s work.

Code, Ok… After hacking up the “remixed” PuffBOMB prototype for the IGF a few weeks back, and spending some time on an outstanding commitment, I’m back on the goods. Between now and then, I wanted to take a short mental break, and I did. I knocked a few things off my list today, like an annoying bug in my build system. On a related note, the new Tortoise SVN is great. With it’s built in spell check and auto completion of class names, file names and changes, it rules. I like it so much, I just added a documents repository for my GameTunnel round up reviews and other written projects I care to attempt.

Audio, I’ve been fiddling with ReNoise some more. Silly me, I finally figured out how to use the E-MU Emulator X software correctly in ReNoise, without needing an instance of the VST per sample. I’ve also been contemplating picking up MadTracker, as I need something that can do a normal tracked format (XM, even though I was always an IT/S3M guy). Not that any of this is meaningful, I’m just saying what’s on my mind.

Alright, we’ve got a nice backlog of posts to make this blog look meaningful now. I’ll quickly spruce up the logo, and sneak off to some magical forums claiming “Oh! Didn’t I tell you, I have a blog too! I can’t believe it never came up in conversation. Har Har Har”. Yes, it will be brilliant.

A new round up should be on the Tunnel soon. Russell was down in TV land promoting the site on Attack of the Show. Spreading the word, keeping it… err… indie.

About tooNormal

tooNormal is the digital notebook of Mike Kasprzak. Some may call it a blog, but it's more a collection of notes and thoughts, when Twitter just isn't verbose enough.

Mike is a long time veteran game developer, having done time at various game studios plus "the indie thing" for well over a decade. He owns and operates SYKRONICS. He also organizes and runs Ludum Dare with some awesome people.